JD Edwards

Translational Research Institute enjoys a JD Edwards lift, shift and services upgrade

The Translational Research Institute (TRI) is a unique, Australian-first initiative of ‘bench to bedside’ medical research. It was jointly founded by the University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, Mater Research and Queensland Health.

Translational research is a fast way to solve health challenges, with teams of researchers, clinicians, patients and companies all working together. Projects currently underway at TRI include: vaccines for rheumatoid arthritis and cancer; treatments for diabetes; diagnostics for ovarian cancer; tests for skin cancer; treatment for kidney disease and a new vaccine delivery nano-patch.

Taking to the cloud

TRI has used JD Edwards since their inception in 2012. At that time, the solution was hosted and supported by a third party via on-premises servers.

The third-party contract expired at the end of 2019, giving TRI the opportunity to investigate their options. They briefly considered bringing JD Edwards in-house as a way of centralising control. However, after considering potential service, support, and cost implications, they decided to enlist a JD Edwards partner to help them move to the cloud instead.

“Moving to the cloud presented us with an opportunity to review and refresh how we use JD Edwards. Any changes we wanted could be done more quickly and easily in the cloud than on physical servers. It also provided us with the assurance of stronger disaster recovery, security and business continuity.”

Zeke Vogts | ERP Administrator, TRI

Looking for the right partner

In July 2019, TRI issued a request for quotation to find a partner who could undertake the lift and shift project from the third-party host and provide a modern cloud platform with ongoing support. Fusion5 had already worked with TRI for many years and have shown substantial experience in JD Edwards, Microsoft Azure, and Managed Services during this time.

“We wanted an all-in-one partner,” said Vogts. “We thoroughly weighed up the costs, benefits, and services on offer, and chose Fusion5 as our best possible partner.”

Proposed solution

TRI signed the contract with Fusion5 in early November before the current hosting expired at the end of 2019. The pressure was on to complete the project by early December.

TRI transitioned their network infrastructure at this same time, and the Fusion5 team rose to the challenge of liaising with the third-party hosts and the new networking team.

Fusion5 migrated TRI’s JD Edwards environment from the ‘on-premises’ infrastructure into a dedicated Microsoft Azure cloud subscription and transitioned the solution to our JD Edwards Managed Services model. This now provides TRI with hands-off cloud infrastructure and security management, disaster recovery, ongoing cost optimisation and supports their future IT business requirements and strategy.

“We delivered TRI a cost-effective, tailored solution through Fusion5’s Cloud Migration Framework which has proven to successfully guide and support the end-to-end Azure migration journey. From the initial architecture design and planning, server migration, to ongoing management and optimisation,” says Kris Jackson, Fusion5 General Manager. “We backed it up with our InfoSec ISO 27001 certified framework alongside our 24x7 Managed Services support. Which means TRI had guaranteed peace of mind during the entire migration process and ongoing post go live support. “Our Managed Services team utilise a modern incident response platform with sophisticated monitoring and alerting tools to deliver real-time notifications and dashboards for pro-active and preventative support. So, before a potential problem can occur within TRI’s environment, we are aware of it, and can assign a technical consultant to prevent issues before a business-critical outage can occur, day or night!”

“Despite their overall size, Fusion5 doesn’t have a big business attitude. They have that caring smaller company touch and feel. You’re not just a number to them.”

Zeke Vogts | ERP Administrator, TRI

A clean cutover

As planned, the go-live went perfectly, says Vogts. “We identified all the potential points of failure and tested everything in our practice environment. When it came to the final cutover to the production environment, we were confident everything would go smoothly. And it did.

“You can tell when a cutover has gone well when none of your users even notice the change. Most of what we do with JDE is procurement, so heading into December, we had lots of people pushing to get things delivered before the Christmas period kicked in. The fact that there was no disruption during this busy time was a real positive.”

Spot on delivery

Vogts says that Fusion5 exceeded his expectations. “Moving from a third-party on-premises situation to the cloud was always going to be challenging. But everything worked out well, and we even got ahead of schedule. This allowed us more time to do some other tasks we were keen to finish before the end of the year.”

Vogts describes his ongoing relationship with Fusion5 as positive. “I’ve known the original Fusion5 staff for quite a while, from developers to senior staff. They have a stable team, and I appreciate that if I get a problem, I always have direct access to the right people to sort it out. Any issues we have are worked through and resolved with little fuss.”